There’s a common idiom heard among the halls of newspaper offices and other media outlets: “old news is no news.”
There was certainly some of that at the Santa Maria City Council meeting on Feb. 3. The meeting was dominated by extensive public comment and discussion among City Council members on how to acknowledge Santa Maria’s efforts to help its immigrant residents deal with less than humane deportations called for by the second Trump administration.
Surely readers are aware that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents have been running around our country, grabbing undocumented immigrants, detaining them, and deporting them. In the process, families have been torn apart. This has overshadowed news and social media for many months.
The local reaction? Fear is spreading around Santa Maria and its surrounding valley, with some undocumented adults afraid to go to work, shop, or take their kids to school.
In response, the City Council passed a resolution to help allay this fear. Here are the key assertions in the resolution:
“Whereas, the Santa Maria Police Department has made clear it does not enforce federal immigration laws and does not inquire about individuals’ immigration status; and whereas, the Santa Maria Police Department’s focus and commitment is community safety and crime prevention, and continues to foster trust and cooperation with our community.”
One asks, are these actions adopted by the City Council, to help protect immigrants in Santa Maria, significant? Will these folks walk down our streets no longer afraid of ICE and CBP?
Not likely. The City Council resolution is redundant, at best.
California law, SB 54, put into force on Jan. 1, 2018, already disallows local police from enforcing immigration law, including inquiring about residents’ immigration status, or cooperating with federal immigrant agents in detaining and deporting them.
The City Council resolution is old news.
Sadly, there are more actions that could help Santa Maria support its thousands of undocumented immigrants. Councilmember Gloria Soto read off a good list of them, but they never made it into the resolution.
Moreover, the mayor put a damper on the evening by looking back to March 3, 2016, describing how the Santa Maria Police and other law enforcement agencies—including ICE—conducted Operation Matador, rounding up 15 MS-13 gang members. The gang, which comprised undocumented members, had been responsible for several murders of local residents in the three years leading up to Operation Matador.
The mayor also noted how other undocumented residents in Santa Maria committed murders, detailing one case in 2015 where the victim was raped and killed by an undocumented man who had a criminal record. That case made national news.
Everything the mayor said was true. The way it was presented in the current context, however, could suggest that immigration itself was the cause of the murders.
I doubt the mayor intended this, but her statements could reinforce unfair perceptions of undocumented residents in the Santa Maria Valley who are overwhelmingly peaceful and otherwise law-abiding, not to mention essential to the regional economy.
And there’s something the mayor may have missed.
In 2014, I was one of four parties that attempted but lost in appealing Santa Maria City Council’s permitting of the construction of the ICE facility that operates today in the city. Not long afterward, I got to know the lead ICE agent in Santa Maria. The agent and I developed a respectful relationship—even though he was aware I had serious qualms about the mission of his agency.
This lead agent, who has since retired, welcomed community leaders to meet with him and also tour the ICE facility. He was honest and transparent—willing to respond to requests from immigration support agencies on the whereabouts of specific residents who’d been detained. During his leadership, ICE agents were ordered to arrest and detain undocumented immigrants who had serious criminal convictions, in accordance with detailed executive actions initiated by the leadership of the Department of Homeland Security under the Obama administration. The ICE agents were generally targeting undocumented residents who fell under the criminal categories warranting detention and deportation.
This was a far cry from the blunt and inhumane approach the second Trump administration has adopted: “mass deportation” to use the words President Trump has stated on numerous occasions. What we have today is a more insensitive, aggressive, and, at times, merciless generation of ICE and CBP agents.
Scott Fina writes to the Sun from Santa Maria. Send a letter for publication to letters@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in February 12 – February 19, 2026.